Tales Of Self-Destruction
by SkinnyLittleSlut
Summary: Loosely linked, this collection of one-shots portray the damage and stress Remus and Sirius put their bodies through daily, and how one always comes to rescue the other. Could be read as pre-slash. Rated M for adult themes, language, self-harm and eating disorder content. Trigger warning - don't read if you're easily triggered.
1. Shock Of The Smoke

Remus had always admired Sirius Black.

The ease and grace in his movements, the shamelessness in which he flirted, the effortless way he struck up conversation with whomever he pleased.

But most of all, Remus admired the way Sirius would blow perfect little smoke plumes through his black fringe and up into the sky.

Remus had never told anyone of this, but he had the feeling that Sirius just knew. He had a way of knowing these things.

Remus' suspicions were confirmed that night.

Sirius, James, Peter and Remus were all sat outside, James swigging Butterbeer from the kitchens and Sirius chain-smoking.

He was sat in between James and Remus, and causally leaning against the lycanthrope's chest, popped a cigarette effortlessly from the packet and offered it to Remus with an offhand "You want, Rem?"

James snorted in derision, whilst Peter raised an eyebrow.

Remus was the most responsible out of the four of them; there was no way in their minds that the golden boy would ever be stupid enough to smoke a cigarette.

Sirius knew him a little better though.

Sirius knew that Remus had a dark streak buried inside of him, that made him adopt bad habits such as cigarettes, so his half-smirking expression was not deterred by James' oblivious snorts.

Remus shot Sirius a grin, delicately extracting the protruding stick and placing it between his cracked lips, accepting the flame that Sirius had just easily sparked.

James spat Butterbeer for about half a mile, he was so surprised, whilst Peter's jaw fell open.

"What- the fuck- Moon?" James spluttered, wiping the liquid from his chin.

Remus didn't reply. He could sense Sirius' dark eyes on him, studying him carefully, so kept all his energy on refusing to let his lungs cough out the poisonous smoke they had just inhaled.

Everything was about control with Remus, and the careful exhale a few seconds later was no exception.

Sirius leant back, slowly clapping his hands in a sarcastic display of congratulations. Remus would have laughed, but he knew any vibration through his throat would send him into a coughing spasm, so instead he took another puff.

"Sirius!" James yelled, turning on the taller boy.

"What?" Sirius asked casually.

"What?! You know bloody well what!"

"Actually I don't. Feel free to enlighten me, however." Sirius said, grinning cheekily at James.

"You just gave Moony a cig!" James exclaimed.

"Your point?" Sirius asked curiously.

"You made Moony smoke!"

Sirius raised an elegant eyebrow.

"I did no such thing. He took the cigarette."

James slapped Sirius around the back of the head, ignoring the protesting grumbles as a result of this.


	2. The Impending Future

"Start a band with me, Moony."

"What?"

Sirius leant back, elegantly exhaling smoke in a perfect ring and studying Remus from under his lashes.

"A band, Moons. Let's start the shittiest band in history. I'll be the god-awful lead singer who can't hit a note to save his life, and you can be the guitarist who doesn't even know the meaning of a chord so he just pulls the pick up and down the strings. We can stay at the bottom of Hogsmeade on the streets and see how little money we make." He explained.

Remus chuckled, taking out another cigarette and lighting it.

Sirius and him were both sat on the windowsill of the dormitory rooms with the window open, smoking. Remus was knelt on the ledge, leaning halfway out so the teachers couldn't smell the lingering stench of tobacco, whilst Sirius didn't really seem to care either way and was blatantly exhaling into the room.

Remus sighed, dropping down as he realised his efforts to prevent the smoky smell from infiltrating the dorm was futile, and settled next to Sirius, who promptly lay his head against Remus' shoulder.

"I'm so done." Remus muttered.

"Don't say that, Moons, I need ultimate commitment from my partner in shittiness. We'll make it so big."

Remus shook his head, flicking ash out of the window.

"I'm going nowhere, Padfoot. I have no fucking clue about the future."

"Who the fuck needs plans?" Sirius snorted. "Where's the fun in that? Live fast, die young, that's my motto. I have no idea where I'm gonna end up, but as long as there's drugs, booze, and girls, I'm fine with that."

Remus chuckled.

"I might just become a heroin addict. Go live under a bridge in Jamaica."

"That's the spirit!" Sirius chirped.

Remus sighed again.

"Now what's wrong?" Sirius asked, his grey eyes gazing into Remus' worried brown ones.

"It's just…I don't know. I'm not as confident as you, Padfoot. I gotta have a plan, or else everything seems to fall apart. I'm scared, to change my mind, to choose wrong, I mean, half of the stuff I chose in the options was based on a career decision I made whilst I was a naive, stupid idiot!" Remus vented, frowning slightly and sinking his teeth into his bottom lip.

Sirius snorted with laughter.

"Remus _Muriel _Lupin, if you're stupid idiot, then that makes me…an uneducated pignut!" Sirius exclaimed dramatically.

Remus exploded into peals of laughter, making Sirius grin as he took a proud drag of his cigarette.

"Okay, first of all, Muriel?! My middle name is John, which you've known since first year," Remus chuckled, "And secondly, _pignut_? _What?_"

"Hey, at the very least...it was inventive. Eh? _Eh?_" Sirius laughed, elbowing Remus in the ribs.

"Okay, ow, _ow,_ dammit Sirius, you have some seriously bony elbows." complained Remus, rubbing the tender stop on his chest gingerly.


	3. The Thing About Scars

It was three in the morning, and Sirius was hyperactive.

The icy December night was merciless on Sirius' undernourished body, the freezing bite of the cold settling in his bones and stubbornly refusing to shift.

He'd given up any attempt of trying to preserve body heat and was simply staring at the top of his bed at five in the morning, dressed in only a loose red shirt and boxers, occasionally burping up gas from the seven energy drinks he'd downed.

He could only sleep in the common room, whilst the fire was on, and lately, as it got closer to Christmas, people had been staying up later and later. By the time it was vacated, Sirius was generally already on his third energy drink and had lost all desire to sleep.

It had gotten to the point where he'd put a can down on his bedside table, and it literally took him a full five minutes to find it again because it was lost in a swarm of clunking, empty cans. He hadn't slept in three entire nights, and was beginning to get a little bit crazy.

He was just about to get up and resume his perpetual routine of obsessively pacing the dormitory when he heard a small stir.

Frowning, he lay completely still, evening out his breathing and adding a small snort. He heard bedsheets rustle, and a cracking noise from two frail kneecaps as the person swung their legs out of bed.

It was Remus, Sirius knew now, because only his knees managed to make that sickening noise every time he got up.

None of the other three boys in the room knew about Sirius' trouble sleeping during winter months. He'd known them now for two years, and he knew pretty much everything about them, from Peter's night terrors to exactly what time James' morning wood went down, to Remus Lupin's furry little problem that they had only recently figured out. And the other boys thought they knew everything about him, too.

In actuality, they didn't know shit.

They had no idea he cut, or that he had both bulimia and anorexia. They didn't twig onto his depression, not even his panic attacks. The closest they'd ever really gotten was knowing that he liked to drink a little too much.

Ridiculously, really. He was only 13 years old. And yet he was so incredibly fucked up. They didn't even know about his parents.

The truth was, Sirius had been forced to mature much earlier than most of his peers, and that had therefore stunted his emotional development. He still had the mentality of a six year old, but had the thought processes and issues of a twenty-three year old.

Remus had gotten up by now and was hovering near Sirius' bed, ensuring that the taller boy was asleep.

Seemingly satisfied by Sirius' pretence, Remus crept into the bathroom.

A few minutes later, Sirius heard plastic crack, and he got out of bed, shivering.

He lay in front of the bathroom door, peeking under the crack there, and wasn't surprised in the slightest to see the other boy carefully scratching himself with the small blade he had.

He knew that he couldn't go into that bathroom and stop Remus, because Remus needed to tell him first. But he needed to stop him somehow - he couldn't watch this.

So Sirius thought, his agile mind whirring, and searched for a solution.

He was staring at the purple groves in his thighs when the idea slapped him in the face.

_Two birds, one stone. _

Sirius crept back to his bed, making no noise whatsoever, and lay on his bed.

He then began to loudly rustle around in his bed, and groaned.

He waited for a minute, and then made a big show of his feet hitting the floor.

He heard hurried shuffling in the bathroom, and smiled.

Sirius practically stomped over the door, but kept his pace reasonably slow.

By now, the noise had stopped in the bathroom.

Sirius hammered his fist on the door.

"Remus! You in there?" Sirius all but yelled.

"Uh, yes! Just brushing my teeth!" came the stressed-sounding response.

"I'm coming in, I gotta piss!" Sirius called, and swung open the handle.

All traces of Remus' earlier activities were gone, and he was indeed facing the sink, slowly brushing his teeth. But Sirius spotted a piece of plastic near to the toilet as he wandered over. Ignoring it, he walked past Remus to get to the toilet, and felt eyes turn on him.

Out of his peripheral vision, Sirius saw honey glaze eyes widen in horror as they took in the jagged, scarlet and purple scars littering his wrists, forearms, upper forearms, and from his very hipbones right down to his ankles.

Sirius finished pissing with slight difficulty thanks to eyes staring at him the entire time.

"Remus, if you want me, all you gotta do is say." Sirius winked, shoving him over to rinse his hands.

He left his words light as he walked out of the bathroom, and to his relief, moments later, Remus got back into bed too.


	4. Insight Through A Locked Door

Sirius was rudely awakened by a small shattering in the bathroom.

He scanned the dormitory. James was snoring, on the verge of tumbling from his bed, and Peter was huddled up under the quilt, only his mousey hair visible. However, the curtains were wide open around Remus' bed.

"Remus?" he called.

Sirius' sleepy voice quickly turned into alert concern when he received no reply from the fair-haired boy.

He knocked softly on the door, aware of the other two people asleep in the dormitory, and called Remus' name softly again.

Upon hearing a choked sob, he rattled the door handle, to no avail; the door was locked.

"Open the door, Rem, I gotta piss."

Silence.

"Rem! I really gotta piss, open up!"

"Go away Sirius!" Remus' muffled voice called from the other side of the door.

Sirius sighed, shuffling away from the door.

A few minutes later, and there was a metallic clatter from the bathroom, coupled with a soft gasp of pain.

Sirius returned to his place at the door, tapping on it softly.

"Remus Lupin, open the fucking door."

Still no answer.

"…Please?"

"It's three am Sirius, go the fuck back to bed!" Remus sobbed after a second, his voice catching.

"Fuck that, I'm not leaving 'till you get your arse outta that bathroom."

Sirius slid down the door, pressing his ear to it and listening to Remus sob, in exactly the same position as him on the other side, judging by the sound.

"Don't cry Rem." Sirius murmured, pressing his bruised hand against the wood.

Sirius' heightened dog senses felt a movement of heat over the surface over his palm, just small enough to be Remus' hand.

Sirius didn't move for an hour straight, ignoring the cramping of his legs, the ache of his back muscles and the desperate need for a smoke. And his patience paid off; he heard the door click, and a miserable Remus stepped out a second later.

Sirius stood up, his joints clicking, and pulled Remus' sleeve up easily.

A graphic display of deep wounds formed the distinct outline of a wolf across Remus' forearm.

Sirius pulled the boy into the a hug, grabbing him tightly and burying his head into Remus' hair.

Nothing needed to be said, the hug was all Remus needed.

"Hey, d-didn't you have to piss?"

"Eh. The plant needed watering anyway."

Remus pulled away.

"Y-you pissed on the plant."

"You'd rather I pissed on the bed?"

Remus shook his head, sighing, and watched Sirius' lips curve up into his trademark smirk.

The boy really did have no shame.


	5. Sirius' Anorexia

It's not that he didn't want to eat.

He'd love nothing more. Watching James as he ate in the Great Hall whilst he just sipped water...it was painful, yeah. Both physically and mentally. Sirius watched him shovel thousands of calories per meal into his mouth at least four times a day, and he also watched James never seem to gain weight from it.

And sometimes, of course, he did binge. Like all anorexic people, he lost control, and he'd sit down, and he'd eat the exact same amount as James. But the difference was, later that night, he'd classify it as the worst mistake of his life, feel like he gained a hell of a lot of weight, run it off plus extra, and then fast for the next day.

James thought it was weird, to say the least. One minute his best friend ate minimally, the next he'd be eating everything he saw, and then sometimes he didn't eat at all.

But after four years of friendship, James learned not to comment on that sort of stuff. He pretty much avoided the topic of food altogether. If James mentioned it, Sirius' mind would cloud up with all the dark things he tried so desperately to repress, and he had to leave, to break down, to relieve the stress constantly on his chest.

He'd lock himself in the bathroom, or he'd leave the castle completely and hide somewhere in the grounds. Normally, Sirius went to exercise off all the calories he ate, but he never told anyone about that because they'd just think he was a huge girl.

The thing was...he hated food.

He hated the feel of it in him, the way it stopped his stomach from gurgling and ceased the perpetual tremors in his body. He hated feeling weighted down by it, and eating numbers, not food. He basically only ate it when he was on the verge of death, or he was binging because he was upset.

Sirius hated to lose control, because his weight was all that he could control.

When his world was spinning off its axis, the grounding sensation of starving was there to help him through it.

And as an anorexic, he was hard-wired to be insanely resentful of bulimics.

Something that Remus just happened to be.

At points, he felt crazily jealous of how Remus just ate whatever he wanted and never gained because he vomited it up. His stomach was never louder than the radio; he never got stared at in class. And Remus managed to maintain a slightly underweight body fat percentage, meaning that he was just thin enough in his eyes, but never really too thin for anyone else to care. And the way Remus just ate whatever the fuck he craved...it drove Sirius mad, because there were days where he'd kill a man for a piece of chocolate, and then Remus would eat three bars in front of him without stopping to savour the taste, and throw it up four minutes later, just to return and start it up again.

Sometimes, he really felt like punching the other boy.

Anorexics and bulimics are both control freaks, but every other aspect is pretty much a polar opposite.

Remus indulged his cravings everyday, never going a day without food that Sirius noticed.

Sirius indulged his crazy side.

He'd fast for days and days, egged on by the dizziness and the feeling of weightlessness and the shakes, the hunger, the lack of appetite...

It was like a drug, and it sure was easier to get.

But he had to be careful.

Last year, he'd gone a little bit too far.

He'd been on the Quiddich Team at the time, and had gained weight from eating everyday because he was always so drained after matches.

His breaking point was the day someone had commented that he didn't look "sickly and starving anymore," that instead he looked like he was "healthy and filling out."

The phrase "filling out" clawed away at him.

That day, Sirius put down his fork, and he didn't touch another bite of food for two entire weeks.

The first three days had gone unnoticed. Remus had realised he wasn't eating by day four, but he'd just pretended he had the flu; he was certainly shaking enough, and they all bought it for an entire extra three days.

Six days in, James had forced him to sit down and eat a meal. But he'd gotten distracted by the beacon of his desire, Lily Evans, and Sirius had dropped all of his meal except a few scraps into the napkin on his lap, tied it shut, tossed it on the floor and kicked it so hard it flew halfway across the hall. No one saw him do it, and Sirius had simply drank water until he was visibly bloated, dropped down his fork full of untouched chicken and announced he was going to bed.

He'd only "ate" when Remus was busy purging, because it was the same time Peter was in the library and Lily Evans was in the Hall. That way, he'd lasted five days without anybody realising he was simply throwing food away.

Because as long as James saw an empty plate after half an hour, he was satisfied.

On the eleventh day, Sirius had received a two-day detention right at the time of the evening meal, and he was delighted.

He'd been allowed to catch the last five minutes of the meal, but no one was there, so all he did was sip water.

As per usual.

He'd lost ten pounds by this point, when he'd only gained eight.

And to be honest, physically, he hadn't been feeling too great.

On the fourteenth day, Sirius was the last to get up in Transfiguration class. He'd stumbled onto his feet, blearily packed his bag, and picked it up whilst leaning heavily on the desk because his head was swimming.

When he'd lifted the bag, he'd come to the realisation that the entire thing appeared to be too heavy for his muscles, which had lost a good amount of density, and as the weight of it had made him trip over his chair leg as he was being forced forward, his mind suddenly went blank and he'd passed out as he was falling.

Except he could still see himself.

His theory was it had something to do with his incredibly slow heart rate, because although it was him falling whilst unconscious, he could physically see all of himself.

He saw his arms give out. He watched with a grimace as his nose smashed onto the edge of the desk. He watched as he went backwards and his clumsy, deadened limbs got tangled with the chair.

He'd watched as his half-dead body dropped to the floor.

He'd even caught the dread of knowledge in Moony's eyes as he pieced together all the symptoms. He saw the fear and confusion in Prongs' eyes, and the concern in Professor McGonogall's.

He saw it all, just before he properly blacked out.

Maybe it had been a hallucination, but the strength of the memory made him doubt that.

When he'd awakened, he was tucked tightly into a bed in the Hospital Wing, and had to deal with an overly concerned Madame Pomfrey, an insanely concerned Remus, and an angry James demanding answers.

His excuse?

Stress.

Everyone in power was aware of the stress that Sirius faced with his family on a day to day basis, and Sirius had created wildly pitiful stories about how in the midst of all this consuming stress, the thought of eating had just simply slipped his mind, or it had consumed his entire body, including his appetite.

James hadn't bought it initially, but a mixture of Sirius' fantastically persuasive puppy-dog eyes and the planting of the notion that he'd been throwing food away in James' blind spot simply because he didn't want to worry his best friend eventually managed to persuade him.

Remus, of course, hadn't believed him for a second, but that didn't really matter.

They had an unspoken bond between them, an unbreakable trust. Neither of them could tell on the other without having to deal with their own disorder, and not one nor the other was ready to deal with that.

So Sirius went back to nibbling at food, under James' mindful eye, and Remus just continued to purge.

But to this day, the thing that stopped him from going back to fasting was the one single thing he remembered before he passed out that day in Transfiguration.

The look in James' hazel eyes as he watched his best friend crumble in front of him, and the single cry of "Sirius!" that had more heartbreak and dread in it than he ever wanted James to feel.


	6. Remus' Bulimia

He'd had issues with food for as long as he could remember.

He'd been slightly overweight as a child. It had been just another thing used against him, as well as his transformation scars and his odd mannerisms. Relentlessly bullied by all the other children, Remus found he could only find comfort in eating until there was no food left. Which in turn, made him gain more weight, and so it continued in a vicious cycle.

Remus wasn't sure exactly what had started it all, when he had made the decision to put his fingers down his throat and vomit up all the food in his belly.

He just knew that one day, he'd done it, and now here he was, a sixteen year old boy in the grips of bulimia nervosa.

He'd dropped the baby fat through his habit, plus an extra chunk of weight, and nowadays looked relatively normal for his size, if not a little on the thin side.

It stopped being about the mirror a long time ago.

It stopped being about the scales, and the calories, and the fat content, and became a part of him.

Like an old friend, it was there to greet him, relieve his stress, give him a semblance of control. Through excessively good grades and his eating disorder, Remus managed to make up for the extreme loss of control he experienced every month through his transformations, and quickly became a habit, maybe even his best friend.

Sirius knew, of course, but how could he possibly understand? He never ate more than necessary to stay alive.

It was a horrifying idea, of course, but one Remus had quickly become used to, as you do being in close proximity to Sirius and knowing all of his dirty little secrets. The boy was like a living inspiration.

Hipbones showing when he lay down. Rib bones protruding when he stretched, perfect, delicate wrist bones underneath his paper-like skin.

Sure, it wasn't really about the weight anymore, but that didn't stop the explosions of envy inside his gut when he'd study Sirius. Study his body.

Bulimia provided him with an element of control, but really, anorexia was the ultimate sense of it.

He'd spent nights sobbing, wishing until his chest ached that he could have the self control not to shovel food in his mouth at every mealtime. That he could slump next to James with an aimless, cocky smirk and watch his best friend eat and eat, all whilst never touching a single bite.

His reward was his perfection, his body, mainly. His perfect, tiny body, skin only just managing to stretch over his skeleton.

And he didn't even have consequences. He never had the acid reflux, or the infamous bloody vomit scare, the scars on his knuckles, the thinning enamel on his teeth which he had to magically repair every few months…Sirius had it all.

As long as Sirius had his cigarettes and his caffeine, he could go food-free for days.

And honestly, if Remus could choose one thing about Sirius Black that could be mimicked in his own personality, it would be that.

Not the end result of bones and endless bruises, just the means to get there. Like wishing for a boat instead of wishing to already be on the next island over.

It would make him appreciate it more.

He loved the idea of being terrifyingly thin, of experiencing the perpetual dizziness Sirius complained about firsthand. Being full just by drinking in air, rather than shovelling food down his throat, throwing it all up, and then retiring to his bed knowing that tomorrow would be exactly the same.

Sometimes once, sometimes twice, and on bad days, maybe four or five times. But every day, without fail, he'd throw up. He'd heave and heave until there was nothing left but the bitter taste of acid, and then he'd heave some more, just to be sure.

He had to be sure.

He had to be empty, even if it was only for a few minutes.

Those few minutes were his window into Sirius' soul, his chance to experience what he truly craved, much preferable to the cardboard texture all foods seemed to have nowadays.

He'd tried, of course, to starve himself.

Just before Sirius scared them all half to death, in that exact time period, actually.

Remus was unknowingly mimicking Sirius' last two days of fasting before his collapse.

He'd made it to forty-six hours food free, riding the exhilaration and the delight, the two pounds he lost and the euphoria of feeling weightless, but then Sirius had nearly died and he'd gone into shock.

He'd been in a stupor, and when he came back into reality he was sobbing in the bathroom, surrounded by chocolate and puddings, right next to the toilet.

He had no idea how much he'd eaten, so he threw up for as long as it took, and fuck, there was so much food.

The shock had kept him in that cycle for two days, because he just kept drifting in and out of reality, perpetually surrounded by food and sin.

His conscious mind kept him purging, but in that state the message just didn't seem to be getting through. It annoyed him greatly, in retrospect.

Sirius' return had snapped him out of it and things returned to relative normality.

The guilt crashing through him made him devour food like it was a drug, and then the guilt from that made him violently purge it.

He was trapped in a circle of self-blame and depression, and it took several reassurances from Sirius that there was nothing he could have done, and a fair few months, for him to get through it.


	7. Sharing The Secret

He'd seen a lot of things in his short sixteen years of life.

His father crying, the video of one of his transformations he'd taken out of curiosity. His friends disappearing, and a dog, a stag and a rat being in their places. But one thing that was still burned into his memory, even after four years, was the image of the scars decorating Sirius' beautiful body like lewd ribbons.

Over time, his body had collected more scars from patterns of self-abuse. But never had it looked as bad as Sirius'.

He didn't know why it still hit him so hard. Maybe it was because he'd been scratching himself with a rusty old blade when he'd heard the sounds of Sirius stirring, and had to quickly cram the blade behind the toilet and stick his dry toothbrush in his mouth under the guise of brushing his teeth. And then the boy he admired greatly, one of the most brilliant boys he'd ever met, had swaggered in, and his body was so incredibly mutilated.

A shock both because it was like a sign of his own fucking future, and also the realisation that you never really _know _someone.

The boy was just so bloody _cocky_, and underneath all his clothes lay the massacre of his self hate. Just like his very own pathetic self.

It was unbelievable at the time. Why the hell would Sirius Black want to hurt himself? He had everything.

And then Remus began to understand.

The groves were still hidden from James and Peter to this very day. Sirius never allowed anyone else to know.

But Sirius let him in, that one, lonely night in second year. Sirius let him realise that the most perfect of china figures have imperfections.

And over the years, it became so fucking clear, that he couldn't comprehend how he hadn't realised sooner.

Those marks weren't all the result of his restless, destructive fingers.

He wasn't naturally that thin.

Mood swings as intense as those weren't actually normal.

People don't ordinarily have a severe panic attack from unexpected contact.

And it was no coincidence that Sirius knew so many hexes and forbidden spells.

Remus had learned so much, just by looking at the right times, and he had the feeling that there was so much more to learn once the trust between them furthered.

So that night, he made the agonised choice to let Sirius see the real him.

It wasn't dramatic.

He didn't make it some huge thing they had to have a deep, girly conversation about.

He just waited until James and Peter vacated the dormitory and left him and Sirius alone, a feat he managed by distracting Sirius with a written down riddle he knew and simply ignoring James until he stomped out to find Lily.

He knew it'd work. James didn't often leave them alone, but he knew exactly how to get rid of James.

Sirius had a one-track mind. It was likely he hadn't even heard James' grumbles. And James hated being ignored; without attention he'd clear off. Peter would predictably follow.

Remus quietly got out a piece of Transfiguration homework, pulled out his quill and his ink, and with a deep breath, took his school robe off and rolled up the sleeves of his school shirt.

He was three inches through the essay when a screwed up piece of parchment flew past him.

Remus looked up with a raised eyebrow to see an annoyed looking Sirius hanging upside-down off the bed, his eyes closed.

"That's bloody impossible!" he groaned, gesturing blindly in the general direction of the parchment.

Remus let a little grin play around his lips as he continued to work, ignoring the explosions of nerves in his tummy.

He caught a glimpse in his peripheral vision when Sirius returned to the right way, and almost threw up when he felt the other boy's silvery eyes rest on him.

He looked up quickly.

Sirius was taking in the scattered scars on his wrists, few in comparison to his, but still, quite a vast amount.

A long silence settled between them.

Remus pretended to do his essay and Sirius openly stared at him.

It rapidly became unbearable, so Remus simply stretched, cracking his back.

"Want a cigarette?" Sirius asked in a low tone, and Remus nodded, leaning over his bed to pack his stuff away.

When he looked up, Sirius had two lit cigarettes dangling from his mouth, and was rolling his own sleeves up.

Remus swiftly crossed the room and took one of the cigarettes with a mutter of thanks, and shot Sirius a questioning look.

"Guess we have no secrets now, right Moony?" he commented, exhaling a cloud of smoke and chuckling darkly.

"Guess not." he replied in response, and turned to stare out of the window.


End file.
